[teeworlds] Proposal: Open Game Lounge System / Community

From: Sven Pfaller <kalterregen@xxxxxxx>

To: teeworlds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Date: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:38:38 +0200

Hello everyone!
Today I'd like to present you an idea that is centered around free and
open source games. It was born via a discussion on mailinglists and
IRC-channels between people from Freedesktop-Games, freegamedev.net and
GGZ [1] in the course of the last two weeks.
The vision is an open, cross-platform game lounge system, used to play
online with people from around the world, browsing through and easily
joining multiplayer games. Its core elements will be:
* a set of open standard protocols describing the communication between
a game-lounge-server, a game-server and a game-client
* an open API for games implementing these protocols
* a game-lounge-server including community features (user-database,
statistics, chatting, etc.)
* a game-browser
The main goal of the project is to make the creation of an open
community for games and gamers eventually possible.
Most of you will certainly know services like Gamespy, Steam,
Windows-Live, Xfire and possibly more. It seems like there currently is
no free and open alternative to them, and this project aims to change
that. Maybe we can change that together.
A more detailed overview of how the system could look like, what the
goals and what the benefits are is available at:
http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/glou/index.php?title=ProjectOverview
Just a word about what this project is not: it is not a replacement for
your current lobby-system. It may be if you want, but it will be created
in a way that it can be used in parallel to your own system.
I have sent this mail (or forum-post, wherever you read it) to the most
influential [2] open source games. You can see a complete list here:
http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/glou/index.php?title=Projects
Ideally this project will be a cooperation between the major open source
games out there. But that's for you to decide. I invite you, game
developers and people interested in open source games, to the Glou (=
Game LOUnge) mailinglist, a place to join the efforts and discuss how
this project should look like. You can join the mailinglist here:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/glou-devel
To hear from you would be great. As a starting point it would be
interesting to know...
* what features the lounge system definitely should have
* what features the current lobby system of your game has
* if you feel the need for an open gaming community
* if you would use the system in your game if it is done "the right way"
* and what you think about the idea in general
For now that's everything. Thank you all for your attention and patience
:) .
Hopefully we'll see each other on the mailinglist to shape the future of
this project together.
Best regards
- Sven Pfaller (aka Noya)
[1] http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Gameshttp://wiki.freegamedev.nethttp://www.ggzgamingzone.org
[2] This is obviously subjective. Feel free to contact projects that may
be missing and add them to the list.